Food allergy can elicit harmful immune responses, e.g., as dermatitis, asthma, gastrointestinal impairment, anaphylaxis shock, etc. Conventional methods for detecting and/or quantifying allergens in food samples generally employ immunoassays, which can suffer from a number of shortcomings. For example, one such method known as Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) requires the use of expensive kits and is semi-quantitative at best. Additionally, conventional immunoassays are generally limited to a single allergen in each screen and frequently result in false positives due to a lack of specificity.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved kits and methods for detecting and quantifying allergens in food samples.